It’s hoped sport in the region, not just football, benefits from the new Central Victorian Regional Administration Centre in Mundy Street.

The centre at the former B-Central building brings together central Victoria’s football departments to provide better support for leagues and clubs.

Incorporated under the new Central Victorian Australian Football Commission – the Bendigo, Loddon Valley, Heathcote, North Central and Bendigo Junior Football Leagues will share resources at the centre, which is essentially a beefed-up version of the Central Victorian Football hub which will move from Dudley House.

About eight to 10 staff will be housed at the new site when it opens this month after the lease was signed yesterday.

CVAFC chairman Collin Brady listed the hub’s advantages: “A greater level of co-ordination with the various bodies, shared resources, better quality planning and centralisation of resources so people can actually have a one-stop-shop if they want information to support their footy club.

“(It will) better enable us to plan for the future of the region as well because you’ll have every football-related body in one spot having a conversation.”

AFL Victoria regional development manager Tony McNamara and Bendigo Spirit administrator Jess Lee will be based at Mundy Street.

“The football hub at the moment at Dudley House is providing administrative support to the Spirit, so those arrangements will stay in place. We’ve also had approaches from other non-football bodies about co-locating here as well,” Brady said.

“We’ve had discussion with La Trobe University about having one of their associate professors of sports management co-located here.

“There’s some other things which we hope to announce in the next few weeks as well.”

The CVAFC region general manager will be appointed soon to head up the centre, while a football development manager will also be based there.

Bendigo Football Netball League chief executive Steven Oliver hailed the new centre.

“It’s terrific that we’re able to move into a facility that can house all the different aspects of footy and that’s part of the Peter Jackson review,” he said.

“This will be a great start for us to really deliver on the benefits for country footy and netball in this region.

“All the existing organisations within the Central Vic Footy hub will transfer across to the regional admin centre and then the additional people that will come along with that – AFL Vic staff, hopefully the umpires, North Central Footy League, netball and we look to create a bigger sports administration environment.

“The youth services are here and most of our participants are considered youth. It’s a step forward and that’s what the commission’s got to do - it’s got to continue to tick some boxes and get some wins on the board and I think this is a great one first-up.”